PJ Vogt

right?

President Trump says American forces destroyed what he described as a Venezuelan drug boat headed for the United States.

The U.S.

military has attacked a second boat in the waters of Venezuela.

U.S.

President Donald Trump launched his most aggressive foreign military action yet, attacking Venezuela, capturing its president, Nicolas Maduro, on Saturday, and promising to put the South American country under temporary U.S.

control.

Hello.

Before we begin this week, an update.

The very strange experiment we started last episode, where, along with our friends at the Hard Fork Podcast, we decided to try to help build the Fediverse.

Basically, we made a small social media website that is not particularly algorithmic, not run by tech moguls, unless you count us, that we called the Forkiverse.

The Forkiverse has taken off with, frankly, much more energy than I expected.

And if you want to hear about what's been going on, the micro scandals, the Russian disinformation campaign, the users we've had to ban, we covered it all on today, Friday's episode of the Hard Fork podcast, which I will include a link to in our show notes.

Okay, some quick ads, then this week's story.

One of the well-documented problems with life on Earth right now, mentioned ad nauseum on this very podcast, is that it's very hard to answer the question of what any of us should be paying attention to.

The internet, the news, offers so many competing stories, most of them highly emotionally charged, deeply complicated.

It's sometimes hard not just to know where to look, but almost like, what exam am I cramming for this week?

What is the topic that I know very little about that I now have to rapidly fashion myself into a pseudo-expert on just to be a citizen?

Last year, for me, one of the stories I chose not to dig into was Venezuela.

It was there in my peripheral vision, Trump complaining about Venezuelan migrants, actively targeting them for deportation.